


To Be Free

by silverjewelkitten



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: F/M, it just went where it went sorry to be a cocktease, this is very stream of consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 20:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13442313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverjewelkitten/pseuds/silverjewelkitten
Summary: Rey reconstructs a light saber, while Ben tries to do the same with their crumbling bond.





	To Be Free

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [To Be Free](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/354630) by silverjewelkitten. 



> Now a podfic! Please have a listen!

In the cold vacuum of space, the First Order’s freighter idles, as Kylo Ren sleeps. His sleep is restless and full of longing for a home and a person he has no claim to. 

He wakes in a cold sweat. Distantly he can recall swatches of color from his dream, flashes, even, of her. Her hair pulled back in his fist, eyes wide and glazed. Her mouth, slick and inviting, with lips red from his teeth. Her voice, far away, but soft as he remembers, like when she called his name, his real name. He’s endeared by her toothy smile as she leaned down to kiss him. The way her lashes fluttered when he tasted and touched her, hands smoothing down her sides, mouth leaving trails of kisses and bites. Bliss. 

Awake now, and alone, he feels shame at his wanting. He drinks a glass of water, then two, and puts his head in his hands, willing the images away. Dreams like this are dangerous, especially among force users. You never know who can sneak inside. 

She’s sleeping soundly, he can feel her contentment and stillness in the force, and is able to will himself to return to sleep, confident that she had not been privy to his earlier dream state. In dreams, one is weak to desire. In dreams, one cannot hide from themselves. 

He drifts back to sleep and she’s there again, her dream-self laughing at something he’d said—an impossibility, as they are enemies again, and he is never knowingly playful like this. It makes him feel warm, though, and he indulges in the fantasy of it for a time. Her hands are smaller than his, smoother somehow, despite living as a scavenger, he notes as she grabs his hand and rests it in her lap. He supposes that dreams take their liberties. 

They’re on a blanket in a field of green grass and purple flowers, on a planet he does not recognize. He feels himself speaking, but has no control over the words that come out. His words are garbled and nonsensical, but she comes through clearly. She stops laughing and stares at him, seemingly afraid. “Who’s going to make them, you?” Her face morphs into a woman he’s never met, yet is so, so familiar. He notices now her dress, orange and decorative, in a style that doesn’t seem to fit Rey. 

Her name comes to him suddenly, without prompting, Padme. “Anakin.” She says, before tackling him into the grass, and finally he understands. His grandfather is showing him a memory. 

They’ve never interacted directly before, but he’s always been his beacon to the darkness. And yet, here he is in balance, in love, in light. Ben acknowledges awkwardly that his grandmother was beautiful. He feels a pull to her like the pull he has felt to Rey. 

The dream changes, and the air thickens. Another woman, who Ben doesn’t recognize lies in his arms, lifeless. He feels rage and sees red as he slaughters a village of indigenous life forms, thoughtlessly, without remorse. Ben perceives her identity—Mother. 

The dreams continue, and unable to bear the weight of his grandfather’s suffering, he shakes himself awake. Loss is not a new concept, but it’s a frightening one nonetheless. As Supreme Leader, he stands to lose much in the coming days, but nothing of importance or value. The First Order has always been a means to an end. A place to vent and scream his frustration and pain at the world, to make it pay for the limitless pain and desperate loneliness he’s felt since birth, before, even. 

And despite having lost Rey already through their unwillingness to compromise, some pitiful hope lingers in his heart, like some wounded thing waiting out the night for the sun. His grandfather had walked willingly into the darkness to protect the people he loved, and he had followed his footsteps, chasing after a real connection and finding nothing but Snoke. His master, his mentor, who sold him falsities of the power of the dark. 

“They’ve sent you away because you’re a burden. But not to me. I could make you strong. You could be valuable to the First Order and fulfill the destiny instilled in you as your birthright.” Snoke had whispered, in countless different ways for so long that Ben had forgotten what honest praise and affection sounded like. 

He was doomed to repeat the twisted words back to Rey, and agonize over them in secret. He had made her feel like nothing, and had rightfully been refused. She meant something to him. She meant everything. No connection in his life had ever felt so inviting, so urgent. To lose her forever would be worse than death—an eternal torment from which he would never be free. 

All at once he understands the treacherous path his grandfather walked. To love, in its very nature, implies an eventual loss. A life without attachments, without emotion, would bring peace—a fundamental truth to Jedi. Rationally he knows that his bond with her cannot be severed so easily. It cannot be erased or undone. It is in his marrow, an incessant tug towards her, always prickling at the edge of his consciousness. 

When they touched, light years apart, his skin had tingled for hours. He hadn’t known the touch of another human in such a delicate, intentional way since he was a child. Now, in the aftermath of her rejection, desire wins over anger or betrayal and he craves more of her skin, her hands, her touch. 

She’s shut him out as best she can recently, putting a wall between their minds to keep him out, but it always tumbles away after so long. Neither have control over when their bond links them. It hurts to realize they’re back to square one. She’s no longer flinging insults, but ignoring him entirely. With an ache in his chest he can’t quite identify, he closes his eyes and returns to the depths of Anakin’s despair in his dreams.  
Something about it feels familiar, and he feels a resonance in the force. 

Hearts beating together, minds thrumming with images. 

Blissfully, the dreams of Anakin and Padme’s tortured love affair fade from his unconscious mind, and their bond grants them a shared dream of peace and contentment. 

As the hours pass, the endless miles between them dissolve, and they curl towards each other silently, through the bond. It would be a blessing to wake with her beside him, in his arms, but when he wakes, her imagined warmth fades and he is left once again, wanting a connection his is not allowed. 

Later that same day, she appears in his study, legs curled underneath her as she reads one of the Jedi texts. So absorbed in her reading she has neglected to close her mind to him. He watches her without a sound for several minutes, as she flips the pages and pushes tendrils of hair out of her face. Her nose is scrunched with concentration. 

She reaches to her side now, and as her hand closes around it, he can perceive one broken half of his grandfather’s light saber. She’s a brilliant engineer, he knows, but with a broken crystal like his own, any rebuilding she does will be unstable at best. 

“I’ve built one before. I can help you.” She jerks immediately, eyes wide like a trapped animal. 

“I don’t need your help.” But she says it softly, without malice. Her cheeks are a delicate shade of pink. He sighs and closes his eyes to meditate. The silence stretches between them, but despite expectation, it is comfortable. Her tinkering turns into hammering and painstaking rewiring. 

The bond has never lasted this long before. He cracks an eye open hesitantly to see her forehead coated with a sheen of sweat, eyebrows furrowed as she concentrates. Some distant part of his mind supplies the word “cute”. 

She snorts. “Cute, really? I wouldn’t take you for a fan of that particular adjective.” He curses the bond for baring his thoughts to her and doesn’t reply, instead focusing on her ministrations. The force pushes and pulls softly, and he feels, briefly, balanced. His treacherous mind drifts away to the dreams of the night before, the feeling of loss Anakin showed him. 

Rey looks to him, sensing his discomfort and holds the light saber out towards him for his approval. “Well, will it do?” 

He takes it from her hand, feeling the weight of the newly added pieces, staring incredulously at the resin she’s pressed into the cracked crystal. His thumb ignites the blade and it sputters to life with a wavering, uncertain shade of blue. “It’s unstable.” His hand reaches to his belt and he draws his own saber alongside hers before igniting it. “Like mine.”

Her eyes are wide with some sort of innocent trust that he feels is misplaced in him. “I guess we’re a matched set.” Warmth floods through the bond, or maybe through his blood. 

His lips curl at one edge into a sort of smirk. “It’ll do.” He drops her saber into her open palm before returning his own to his belt. 

She doesn’t look at him for a while. Her hands clutch at the fabric of her tunic and her lips part as if to speak, but she doesn’t. She’s gotten better at hiding her thoughts from him, and he seems to have forgotten how entirely. “I wish things were different. And that this…meeting like this wasn’t some huge secret.” She’s raw and honest, and it breaks him in two. 

“I know.” Her eyes are glassy but tears don’t fall. She shakes her head and stretches her legs out in front of her. Doe eyes blink and shift to him. 

“I want to trust you. Against all my training and better judgment. Somewhere inside I know you won’t hurt me.” She’s right. He would never hurt her intentionally, not now, after everything. “But despite that, I can’t be who you want me to be. “

Ben listens intently, hoping communication is the first step to righting the wrongs of his ancestors. “Who do you want to be?” 

Rey hugs her knees and rests her ahead on top of them. “I don’t know.” She answers back, quiet and truthful. “What about you? What do you want?”

He runs a hand through his hair, since he doesn’t have a good answer either, just a vague concept. “To be free.”

Both floundering and lost, but blessedly not alone. Together they may one day find balance, but for now, the bond fades away, and they are left lonely and vulnerable.


End file.
